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Excerpt
Apart from CEO at 22, what are the five key books I should read and why?
I recommended How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie last time. So definitely that is one book that I believe everyone should read.
Second would be the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. I’ve read that I think four times already since I was 12 years old. Fantastic book. Those are the laws of leadership. Leadership is important in all areas of your life.
In your own self-discipline, you have to lead yourself. In your marriage, you have to lead. In your family, you have to lead. If you’re the guy you have to lead with protection, with provisions, with spiritual leadership. If you’re the wife, you have to lead with nurturing, caring, and supporting, honoring, respecting leadership is really just super important and learning the laws behind it that will serve you for the rest of your life.
Another book that I really love. That I recently read would be Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, the rules of negotiation. It just helped me out because I’m a sales guy and I negotiate. As the CEO, I’m the guy who fixes stuff. There’s something broken or there’s a conflict between people, maybe between client and an account manager. I’m the guy who comes in and tries to fix things. And that involves negotiation. That’s why business people in the Philippines are called negosyante. You have to negotiate. You can’t be a businessman if you can’t negotiate. So that one is a really good book.
Another book would be Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Being a team player is super important for me. That book helped me to learn about what breaks down a team. What makes it dysfunctional and how you can deal with it. It’s such an easy read because Patrick Lencioni writes it in a story narrative where he’s just like narrating a fairy tale, but in kind of a real-life, telenovela kind of way. So you learn the principles as you read the story. And that for me, makes it very easy to read.
Another book would be EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. Because I’m a businessman and I had to scale up my business. I had to make it bigger. I had to deal with all of the accounting, legal. I have to make processes, train people, improve my hiring processes, improve my firing processes. All of these things that you don’t think about when you’re starting up, because when you’re starting up, all you think about is: How can I improve my cashflow? How can I survive? How can I make revenue greater than my expenses? That book, Entreleadership. is definitely something that I think a lot of people should read. It’s super underrated because not a lot of people know about that book.
The default answer would be the Bible. And I think you might figure that I’m, I’m cheating by giving this answer, but I think it is a book that has changed my life the most. So I’ve read, I’ve read the Bible for 14 times already, and this is my 14th time to read it. I’m in the book of Ezekiel and the principles that I learned there are secondary. What is primary for me is how I am able to listen to God and his will for my life. That for me is life-changing. That for me is super important. That took me from where I was to where I am now.
When I was younger, I said, this doesn’t make sense to give 10% of what you make the God, how can you make more from that? But I fatefully gave my tithes when I finally had my allowance in college. So that was a small amount and I still give my tithes up until now, now that I’m doing business and the revenues is bigger than my allowance and, you know, God has always been faithful.
He has always provided for us. That promise is true. It’s very true in my life. It can be true in yours. That’s why I cannot not include the Bible in the top five books.